About two and a half years ago I came home from an Alpha
evening, and inspired by a conversation with one of the leaders, dusted off my radio, found
the AM aerial and tuned into what was a new station for me, radio Rhema. I caught this strange sounding and rather excited
gentleman discussing what he called the most remarkable chapter in the Bible,
part of a book containing some of the most validated and accurate prophecy in
all scripture. By the time I had
finished listening to that broadcast I was well on my way to changing my view
on the nature of the Bible and the existence of God. For the first time I could start to understand
that he worked in peoples lives then and now and inspired the prophets and the
authors of ancient scripture.
Fast forward 18 months to this year, where I took a paper on
Hebrew Scriptures, one that tried to redefine the authorship of the old
testament and the reason for them to be written For the most part it excluded
the possibility of prophecy as an explanation, and almost excluded God. One book was referred to as a random
collection of court tales and dramatic
apocalyptic fiction obviously written long after events it
described. It left me at times feeling
despairing and hollow.
Yet, both of these views came from renowned scholars and
committed Christians, and both of them were describing the book of Daniel.
The book of Daniel, possibly more than any other single book
in scripture, divides scholars and Christians into two distinct camps. It has inspired some of the most extreme
Christian sects, and yet still grounded some of the greatest theologians and
evangelists in the Church. If anyone
asked me to pick my favourite book of the Bible, it would be Daniel. It’s influence on me has been fairly constant
in the last 3 years and promises to continue on for a lifetime ahead.
So who wrote Daniel, and when? Well that is the beginning of
the divisions. Some scholars, especially
those of the 19th and early 20th century say it is a very
late writing, even the most recent book of the OT, written in the 2nd century
BC as inspiration to the faithful undergoing the persecution of Antiochus
Epiphanes in the times of the Maccabees. More
traditional scholarship, and a re-emergent view today, actually credits it to
Daniel writing in the 6th century BC while he resided in the Courts
of several nations at Babylon. Critics
of it being written by Daniel himself point to apparently inaccurate historical
facts, most of which have evaporated
during the last 100 years as archaeology validates more and more of what is
described. Those in favour of Daniel
point to its accurate descriptions of court life as being something incapable
of being written 400 years after the fact.
And while critics say the language employed is too modern for Daniels
time, supporters point to new evidence of ancient usages of those very same
words. But the root of the dispute lays
deeper than that, and to see why let’s look at the content of Daniel.
It consists of 12 chapters that at first glance seem to be
barely related. The first thing to
realise is they are not all chronological, but are grouped by writing
style. The first 6 chapters take the
form of narratives about episodes in the courts of Babylon which are tied
together by a common character, Daniel.
These are the stories we all know well and are learnt by Sunday school
kids and immortalised by Vege Tales, the fiery furnace, the lions den, Nebuchadnezzar’s
dream and the writing on
the wall. These narratives are so well
known both in and out of church that some of them have become every day
expressions and are ingrained in peoples vocabulary. You have to wonder just how many people
realise they are quoting Daniel in everyday conversation.
The next 6 chapters are a lot less well known and a lot more
troublesome for people to come to terms with.
These chapters consist of a series of visions and revelations that
Daniel has. We have the four beasts, the
ram and the goat, Daniels prayer and Gabriels visit, and a series of dreams of
men and kings. It is the stuff of
nightmares and apocalypse that only finds a parallel in the book of Revelation. These 2 genres of writing are so different
from each other that it makes you wonder what they are doing in the same book,
let alone attributed to the same author.
That is until you start to realise the time frame the book encompasses
and how the opening chapters describe the devout nature of Daniels character
and his abilities of discernment, all of which provide validation to his
visions and dreams. We are not dealing
with some eccentric individual but someone who was respected by the leaders of
the known world and had a track record of being at the heart of miracles and
solving problems.
So who can tell me what language Daniel is written in? That’s right, it is written in two languages.
Half way through Daniel Chapter 2 Verse 4, right in the middle of a sentence,
it switches from Hebrew to Aramaic, if you look in your Bibles most of them
indicate this. It continues in Aramaic
until the end of chapter 7. Then it
switches back to Hebrew again for the next 5 chapters. Again it prompts the question, how could this
be written by the same author? Many
people say it can’t and that it is just another reason to doubt its clams of
originating from Daniels hand. Yet when
you look at it closer you realise that the bits in Hebrew are directed at the
Jews in exile, while the bits in Aramaic are directed to the gentiles, a very
deliberate means of ensuring the correct audience reads the message meant for
them. For example, the writing on the
wall could not be read by those present at the feast, because it was in a form
of cyphered Hebrew, hence Daniel could read it when others couldn’t.
But even this is not the root cause of the division by this
book prompts, ultimately it is the prophecy contained in Daniel that cause many
to reject its ancient origins. If you
start from a position where prophecy is not possible, where God cannot be
supernaturally active in our world, then you cannot accept it being written by
Daniel as the prophecies within are far too accurate and far too detailed to be
written in advance. Both Nebuchadnezzar’s
and Daniels dreams
predict the empires that would follow Babylon and the writing on the wall
matches the exact events described in the archaeological record. While at the same time as denying this
prophecy this position also writes off the miracles described as fiction.
This position of hiding God could be quite defendable if it
wasn’t for one thing. There is more prophecy that could not possibly be written
after the fact and we have a bounty of manuscript evidence to prove this. One example, the one I heard described on
radio rhema that night, is a prophecy so astounding that if you accept it the
veils of hiddenness people like to place on God are ripped aside and you have
no choice but to accept his works in our world.
If we pick up where
today’s reading stops, after Daniels heartfelt prayer acknowledging their sins
and recognizing the allotted time of 70 years is about up, a prophecy in its
own right from Jeremiah that came true, Daniel receives a vision from Gabriel
described in (Da 9:24–25).:
Seventy weeks are determined upon thy
people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end
of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting
righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most
Holy. Know therefore and understand,
that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem
unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks:
the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
What I am going to present, very briefly here, is a view that
is not universal, but then what interpretation ever is, but it is one many good
Bible scholars accept it and I think it is worth considering. There are objections to it, and it relies on
certain positions being true, none of which we have time to go into, but I find
Chuck Misler to generally have good research and full references can be found
in his works regarding the 70 weeks of Daniel.
From the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the revealing
of the Messiah the King shall be be seven
weeks, and threescore and two weeks, or sixty-nine weeks, which we can
interpret as weeks of years, ie one week of years is 7 years. If we accept that the Bible clearly uses,
both in Genesis and in Revelation, a 360 day year, then Sixty-nine weeks of
360-day years equals 173,880 days. We now can get from Ezra and Nehemiah, that
they went back to build the Temple in Ezra but got nowhere until Nehemiah was
able to obtain the authority to rebuild the city. That authority was given by
Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 B.C., a date that can be verified
through documentary evidence. That is
the trigger; but when was the Messiah presented as King?
Let’s pull together a few more pieces of the puzzle.
There is a prophecy in Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem:
behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and
riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” And that’s exactly
what Jesus did. He never allowed himself to be worshiped as a king except for
the one day that he not only allowed it, He arranged it. He had the disciples
get a donkey, and He rode from Bethany up over the Mount of Olives down through
the Kidron Valley into Jerusalem, deliberately fulfilling Zechariah 9:9.
In Luke 19, in the passage that we call the Triumphal Entry
account, the people sang Psalm 118, which is a Psalm proclaiming Him as the
Messiah: “Blessed be the King that cometh
in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest”. The
Pharisees said, “Master, rebuke your
disciples.” Why did they say that? Because they recognized that the
disciples were proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah and King, and felt they were
blaspheming! And Jesus declared, “I tell
you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry
out” (verse 40). This event (and this is where the assumption takes place,
that Jesus was crucified in 32AD), occurred on April 6, A.D. 32,
This turns out, when accounting for certain people playing
with calendars and adding and removing days, to be 173,880 days from the decree
authorizing the rebuilding of Jerusalem! The Angel Gabriel gave Daniel a
prediction of the exact day the Messiah would present Himself as King to
Jerusalem.
When Jesus rode the donkey into Jerusalem, Luke 19:41 says, “When he was come near, he beheld the city,
and wept over it.” Why? He said, “If
thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes”. He held Jerusalem
accountable to understand that this was the day that was scheduled in God’s
plan.
What makes this particularly remarkable is that the Old
Testament, including Daniel, was translated into Greek in the third to second century
BC. At least 100 years before Christ was
born. This is one of the most astonishing verifications that Jesus Christ
really was the Messiah of Israel.
The prophecy continues with some other remarkable claims, and
feel free to read these and take from it what you will. For now let us just think on what this first
prophecy means. If we accept it, we have
a clear and precise prophecy for when Jesus would reveal himself as the
Messiah. A prophecy that cannot have
been written after the fact, one that makes us stop and say, wait, if that is
true, then there is no reason why the rest of the claims in Daniel, claims of
prophecy and miracles, cannot be true as well.
=====================
I got to this point in my sermon, or at least in my outline,
by Tuesday evening. I was feeling good
and well prepared. I took a break to go
to the airport to pick up my wife and her mum.
My mother in law has had a serious ulcerated infection in her leg for quite a
few weeks that would not heal in Samoa, so we finally convinced her to come
to NZ to get treatment.
On Tuesday afternoon she was admitted to hospital and on
Wednesday morning they performed the first of 3 planned surgery’s to clean the
wound. All was good, the surgeons were
happy, she was recovering in the ward and I was thinking of how I would finish
my sermon. At 2:46am Thursday morning
the phone rang informing us that she had been transferred to ICU as she
had become unresponsive and had extremely low blood pressure. By 9am we were ringing her family around the
world informing them she had suffered a major stroke.
Why am I telling you this, what has it got to do with Daniel?
Well, for the past three days,
I have been at Wgtn Hospital, most of the time spent sitting outside the ICU
watching the range of human emotions as people deal with the suffering of their
loved ones. What I have noticed most,
even within our family and friends is that most turn to the Drs and put their
faith in science and modern medicine.
And many are shattered as modern medicine fails to help a loved one.
Yet there is a small group who
you can tell view things differently, who are at peace with what is happening
as they understand who is in control.
Like Daniel and his friends their faith is in God and they know that it
is Gods hand that guides the Drs, it is Gods will that determines the outcomes.
You see the greatest treasure in Daniel is not that it is a
wonder of prophecy, or a recording of great miracles. Its greatest treasure is the proud claim that
God is there and active in our world, that he works through many different and
diverse people to achieve his works.
That even in a world that wanted to hide God from view, to deny his very
existence and punish those that worship him, there was still hope, and some of
Gods greatest miracles and prophecies came forth.
It is a treasure that is especially precious today, where not
only is the secular world we live in actively denying Gods existence, but
governments of once Christian nations are persecuting believers who profess
their faith and parts of the church itself are denying Gods works. We live today in a world where the new Nebuchadnezzar
is science and great idols are raised up that people turn to rather than God
because they fail to see how God can help.
They fail to see because the exclude the possibility.
We have been repeatedly told
in the last 2 days by many different Drs that this may be a stroke from which mum does not recover, she has been thrown in the proverbial lions den and
while they say they hope she will recover, their hope goes no further than the
numbers they see on the machines in front of them.
Last night we got another
phone call, this time from relatives in Samoa who asked that I go and
pray over mum, and the room, and the hospital and for the Drs and Nurses, that
I deliver my lauga for her as I prepared to deliver mine to you today. As I nervously drove back into the hospital,
frantically trying to recall what it is I am supposed to say. If you’ve ever heard a Samoan prayer, you
would understand why, I thought of my unfinished sermon and realized all I can
do is to invite God in and allow him to be present, the rest isn’t anything to
do with me. I also realized how I would
end my sermon.
So I stood praying over mum last night, and I watched a woman who 36 hours earlier was completely
paralyzed down her right side, reach up with both hands to great her great
grandson. As we openly asked the holy
spirit to fill her room, as we welcomed God into that space, you could sense
just as Daniel and his friends did, that a miracle may now be possible, that
our hope, just like Daniel faced with certain execution if he failed to recall
and interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream OUR hope is built upon something stronger
than machines and the hands of men, and it is a hope that is not present unless
you invite God in and welcome his presence. It is a hope that Daniels prophecies and
miracles testify too across the millennia, a hope as precious and real today as
it was 2500 years ago.
Since this sermon was delivered, mum has made a wonderful recovery and has returned home to Samoa, a true testimony to the power of prayer and our Lord.
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